


Hyperion City, morning

by FaintlyMacabre



Series: Faintly Does Kinktober 2020 [8]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Angry Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Communication, Episode: s01e18 Juno Steel and the Final Resting Place, Fix-It, For a second, Hurt/Comfort, Junoverse | Juno Steel Universe, Other, Overstimulation, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Praise Kink, Riding, Self-Hatred, Trans Peter Nureyev
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:14:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27144346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaintlyMacabre/pseuds/FaintlyMacabre
Summary: Peter falls asleep. And then he wakes up. Watches through mostly closed eyelids as Juno slips out of bed, reaching for his discarded shirt on the nightstand. It’s hard to tell in the low light, but it looks like Juno is watching him. Making sure he stays asleep? Or…Memorizing him.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: Faintly Does Kinktober 2020 [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956079
Comments: 18
Kudos: 128





	Hyperion City, morning

**Author's Note:**

> So, as you know, when you enter this fandom, you're handed your gender crisis and Final Resting Place fix-it fic plot bunny. My plot bunny arrived only yesterday, a year and change after I got here. Better late than never, I guess!
> 
> Technically I wrote this for Kinktober (prompts: morning sex/overstimulation), but it changed a couple times while I was writing it. A hundred words or so into it, I thought, "Oop, maybe this is a totally different thing and not going to be sexy at all." Several hundred words later, I went, "Never mind!" 
> 
> CW: abandonment issues, self hatred, internalized ableism, passive suicidality, (brief) mention of surgery/eye trauma, mention of possible genocide (w/r/t Miasma). Also, Peter is trans and receives penetrative sex, no specific terminology used for his genitals.
> 
> All right, I think that's all. Happy(?) reading.

Peter falls asleep. And then he wakes up. Watches through mostly closed eyelids as Juno slips out of bed, reaching for his discarded shirt on the nightstand. It’s hard to tell in the low light, but it looks like Juno is watching him. Making sure he stays asleep? Or…

Memorizing him.

Juno turns. His profile is lit up neon from the light that seeps through the curtains. His brow is furrowed, his lips are pressed together in a flat line, and his eye is closed. Peter recognizes what this is. He’s experienced in making similar escapes, although he’s sure he’s never looked this regretful doing it. Maybe once. He can feel something begin to fracture in his chest, but he tapes it up and files it away, and he does what he does best. He acts.

“Hmm?” he says without opening his eyes further and reaches across the bed. “Juno?”

Juno startles, hesitates, sits back down on the bed and takes Peter’s hand. “Hey,” he says, his voice breaking on the syllable.

Peter opens his eyes slowly now. “Getting dressed?” he says, as though he doesn’t understand what’s happening.

“I, uh.” Juno turns away so the bandaged side of his face is toward Peter. “I got cold.”

Peter almost suggests alternative means of getting warm, but stops himself. It’s such a terrible lie that he can’t help but suspect that Juno wants to be caught.

“Love,” he says instead, and Juno flinches. He tries again. “Juno. Look at me?”

Juno doesn’t look at him, just crumples in on himself further. Peter will have to make himself more vulnerable if he wants to get anywhere, so he sits up, shivering in the uncomfortably chilly air of the hotel room. Juno does look at him then.

“Hey, don’t—no reason for you to be cold, too,” Juno says.

“I’m not having this conversation with the side of your head.” _I need you to look at me when you tell me you’re leaving_ , he almost says, but doesn’t.

“What conversation?”

“The one you’re avoiding.”

“I’m not—” Juno begins, and from the indignation in his voice, Peter’s sure he’s going to deny it, but then he sighs. “I can’t.”

Nureyev begs any gods that might be listening that Juno means anything other than... well. “Can’t…?”

“You know.”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking. I think the time for games has come and gone.” There's still the slightest possibility that Juno is not leaving him, a sliver of a chance. Peter’s not just shaking from the cold now, but if he’s lucky, Juno won’t be able to tell the difference.

“I can’t go with you,” Juno whispers, tucking his chin to his chest. Peter takes his hand and runs a thumb over the scarred knuckles. “Didn’t you hear me?”

“I heard you perfectly well, Juno,” Peter says. He looks at Juno’s hand in his, noting the contrast between them. His own hands are smooth and soft, not the result of easy living, but of doing everything as carefully and efficiently as possible and taking care to avoid or repair any marks that might be left on him. Juno’s knuckles have been split open, and the backs of his hands are scarred and burnt. These are the hands of a person who has spent his life throwing himself into the line of fire so that he can get the job done, so that others don’t have to. Before he can stop it, the memory of Juno blurting out, “You’re the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me,” breathless, almost ecstatic, on the other side of a door appears whole cloth in his mind, and he has to press Juno’s hand to his lips to try to push it away.

Peter realizes something. As soon as Juno got out of bed, no matter what he'd told himself, he’d known that Juno was leaving him. He'd also known that there was a piece of himself missing that couldn’t be papered over with beautiful clothes and beautiful words, and that Juno would have been sharp enough to see it. He’d known that Juno was hurting, and that someone who was hurting that badly would never be able to make a life with someone as empty, as incomplete as he is. But looking at Juno’s hands now, feeling his scars under his fingers and lips, Peter realizes this isn't about him at all.

“Nureyev?” Juno says, and Peter grieves for a future in which he will never again hear his own name spoken aloud with warmth.

“Can you tell me why?” he says, and his voice barely shakes.

“Nureyev—”

“Please.”

Juno doesn’t look at him. “You’re going to realize you were wrong about me,” he says. “You’re going to realize that I’m nowhere near as good, or smart, or anything as the person you think I am right now. I can’t even shoot anymore. I’m no good to you.”

_You are that good_ , Peter wants to shout. _You’re brilliant_. He swallows that impulse. “I’ll keep my comments to myself for the moment. What else?”

“’What else?’” Juno says. “Isn’t that enough?”

“I’m afraid not,” Peter says. “What else?”

“Didn’t you hear me? I am _broken_. I had a purpose and I’m not even good for that anymore.”

“What purpose?”

“Protecting people.” Juno laughs humorlessly. “Protecting people by shooting other people.”

“Juno, you’ve done that,” Peter says. “Even after you lost your eye, in I don’t even know how much pain, you stopped Miasma.”

“It was pointless!” Juno says. “The Egg wouldn’t have hurt anyone else.”

“Do you really think that would have stopped her?” Peter says. “Believe me, I have considered this. I spent hours in that hospital waiting room, trying to think how, if I could go back, I could have gotten you out of there in time to save your eye, in time to keep you from being hurt as badly as you were." This next bit shouldn't be as hard to say as it is. "I told them we were married so that I could stay with you, but hospitals keep even spouses out of the operating theater, and you were in surgery for so long. I had a _great_ deal of time to think about this.

“The Egg of Purus, for whatever reason, is obviously reusable. She succeeded in recreating the Lassonionic Capsule, and I have no doubt that she would have engineered a new bomb that worked on human DNA. Every human life on the planet—perhaps they would have a year or two while she worked out the problem, but they would be gone, Juno. You stopped that from happening.”

“I wasn’t in that much pain,” Juno said after a moment. “I think I went into shock pretty quickly.”

“I rather think that bolsters my argument,” Nureyev says. For the first time, the corners of Juno’s mouth twitch up. It’s not quite a smile and it doesn’t reach his eyes, but it makes Peter's heart beat a little faster all the same.

Juno sighs again. “You asked what else. Nureyev, I… I can’t leave. I belong here.”

“Juno, this place is killing you.”

“Maybe it should,” Juno says with no emotion in his voice. “This city and I deserve each other.” Peter shudders at that, and Juno looks at him properly. “You’re cold. Here.” He takes off his shirt and throws it around Peter’s shoulders.

“Yes, well, when I fell asleep, I didn’t anticipate having this conversation first thing in the morning,” Peter says. “Now you’ll be cold. Come on, let’s get in bed properly.”

“Nureyev—”

“It’s no good making ourselves suffer further while we talk,” Peter says.

“I think I’ve given you enough reasons,” Juno says, but he draws his legs up onto the bed.

“And now it’s my turn,” Peter says. He sits back with his shoulder against the headboard and pulls the covers up over them both. “Juno, did you mean what you said in the tomb, just before the Egg went off?”

Juno looks away. “I don’t remember all of what I said in there, Nureyev. There was kind of a lot going on.”

Peter is pretty sure he’s lying, but he can hardly call him on it. “You said I was—that I made you think that 'maybe it’s all worth it.'”

“I—yeah,” Juno says. “I meant that.” He rubs at his forehead before continuing. “I’m… pretty sure I meant everything I said in there. I thought… I thought that was going to be it, and I might as well... you know.”

Peter tamps down the soaring feeling in his stomach at Juno’s admission. The knowledge that he is important to Juno is meaningless in the face of everything else. “And… did you mean what you said last night?”

“Nureyev, I…”

“ _Not_ the part about intending to leave with me,” Peter says, cursing himself for leaving himself open like that. “When you said that you may have… been a fool as well.”

“Did _you?_ ”

Suddenly, he’s angry. “Of course I did. I haven’t lied to you since the day we met. I’ve wanted to take you away with me ever since that night in your apartment. When I think of you, Juno, I don’t imagine that I’m someone else, and I don’t imagine that you are, either. You are the only person I’ve ever wanted to take with me into the life I lead. Running is, for better or worse, part of who I am now. I want to run away _with you_.”

Juno looks like he’s fighting to keep some emotion off his face, but whether it’s grief or anger or something else, Peter can’t tell. “You don’t know me that well, Nureyev.” Peter clenches his jaw to keep from screaming, but Juno is, apparently, not done. “You’ve seen sides of me that no one else has, sure, but there are so many things you don’t know. Even if I weren’t damaged goods, you don’t know who you’re asking to run away with.”

“Damaged—Juno, that’s—” Peter has to take a deep breath. “You are not ‘damaged goods.’ You lost an eye, and no, I can’t begin to know what that’s like. But you can learn to shoot again, and even if you couldn’t, you are worth so much more than that one skill.” Peter takes a deep breath. “And if you’re not willing to accept that, my offer of a cybernetic still stands. It’s open indefinitely, for as long as I can manage it.”

“Careful of making bad investments.” And that’s it. Somehow, that’s the last straw. Peter growls, a sound he can’t remember ever making before rumbling low in his throat, and practically launches himself at Juno. He straddles his lap and kisses him hard, not getting too near his bandaged eye socket, but otherwise not bothering to be careful.

“You are not an investment,” he says between kisses, and his voice is rough. “You are infuriating.” He kisses him again, and Juno’s hands come up to his bare hips. “You are the most stubborn—” He nips Juno’s lower lip, and Juno gasps. “—reckless—” He rolls his hips down and feels Juno getting hard under him. “—beautiful man I’ve ever met.”

Peter’s wet, and he ruts against Juno’s cock. Even in the moments when they’re not kissing, Juno seems unable to say anything, and that’s exactly what Peter needs right now. “The only person I trust to keep up with me.” Juno’s cock twitches against him, and suddenly Peter needs more. “The only person I trust.” He reaches down between them to take Juno’s cock and line himself up. It might be slow going, but Juno fingered him a mere few hours ago, and he can’t make himself wait now. Peter lowers himself slowly, gasping at the stretch. Juno whimpers, and for several moments, neither of them can speak. Peter can, however, duck his head and bite Juno’s neck hard. Juno cries out and twitches inside him, and wraps his arms around Peter. That’s when Peter starts to move, only rising an inch or two before dropping back down. He braces his hands on Juno’s shoulders and pants against his neck.

“Want you with me,” he whispers, and kisses Juno’s jaw. Juno whines in his ear and nips at his earlobe. “I want you with me all the time.” Juno thrusts into him once, as though it’s a question. Peter moans. “Yes, darling.” Juno begins rolling his hips, fucking into him, and Peter meets his thrusts until he feels as though he can do nothing but hold on and kiss every part of Juno he can reach.

One of Juno’s hands comes up to cradle the back of his head, and Peter thinks his heart may break, even before Juno whispers, “Nureyev,” into his ear.

“Oh, Juno, love,” Nureyev whispers back, and this time, rather than flinching away from the endearment, Juno tightens his arms around Peter. His speed increases, and Peter feels himself getting close. “Don’t stop.”

“Not going to stop,” Juno whispers. The harshness of his breathing is music to Peter.

“So good,” Peter praises, and Juno moans. “Oh, Juno, so good for me.” It’s difficult to tell, with their movements, but he thinks he can feel Juno twitch inside him. “So lovely like this.”

“Nureyev, I’m going to come if you keep saying that stuff to me,” Juno says. He’s already started to lose his rhythm.

“Rather—ah—the point,” Peter says, nearly at the edge himself. “You deserve it. My good girl. My Juno.” At this, Juno muffles a shout against Nureyev's clavicle, thrusts hard and comes, and the movement sends Peter over the edge. He cries out, holding Juno close, and rides out his orgasm until Juno whimpers. At the sound, Peter makes to get off of Juno, but Juno just holds his hips in place and says, “Keep going.”

“Are you sure?” Peter says, hardly eager to turn down the offer, but still concerned.

“I’m sure,” Juno says. His eye is closed and he makes a little noise every time Nureyev rolls his hips, but his head is tipped back in apparent appreciation and he keeps holding on. Finally, Peter feels sated and rises up off of Juno, who whines at the sensation.

Peter lies down on his side, propping himself up on an elbow, and looks at Juno sitting against the headboard. His skin is covered in a fine sheen of sweat, making it look like velvet in the growing light of early morning. His well-muscled chest is still heaving, but slowing down to a more moderate rhythm. One hand lies on the bed between them, and when Peter brushes his fingers against the back, Juno takes his hand. They stay like that for a moment until Juno opens his eye.

Peter is afraid. He is afraid because he knows that this changes nothing, that riding Juno Steel into the mattress wasn’t enough to convince him to leave Mars and the rest of his life behind to follow Peter into the stars. But then, it wasn’t meant to, was it?

“Juno,” he says, and Juno just looks at him and nods instead of interrupting. “Juno, I know that—that you…” He sighs. “You still can’t go with me, can you?”

Juno looks a little surprised, perhaps at Peter’s resignation, but shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I do want to, but—”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Peter says. “If you can’t… you can’t. That’s all.”

“Did you—” Juno begins, stops, reconsiders. “I mean, I know you wouldn’t—but sometimes people say things in bed when they wouldn’t otherwise—”

“Juno, please just ask me.”

“Did you mean it?” Juno says, and flinches as though he’s waiting for a strike or a laugh. “Did you mean what you said to me? The way you see me, it… did you mean that?”

“Of course,” Peter says. “You’re completely infuriating.” And that actually gets a laugh out of Juno. “Yes, I meant all of it.”

“Oh,” Juno says, and he looks… surprised? Well, Peter’s realizing that Juno Steel has more going on under the surface than he knew, and that there are things that Peter’s not necessarily equipped to help him with, and that even the greatest sincerity may not be enough, much of the time. But the fact that he’s willing to believe Peter now is… encouraging. “Okay. Can I… ask you something else?”

“Please do.”

“Do you think you might ever… come back?” Juno says, and immediately starts trying to qualify the question. “Not that you have to, and maybe coming back to the same planet so much wouldn’t be safe, and maybe it’s just not enough, and I’d understand that—”

Peter puts his free hand over Juno’s mouth. “I would,” he says. “If you wanted me, I would.”

“Yeah, I—I do,” Juno says. He looks down at their joined hands as though witnessing a marvel, then back up into Peter's eyes. “I do want you to come back. When you can. If you can.”

“Then I will,” Peter says, as though it’s that easy. Tendrils of apprehension, of fear, creep up again, this time at the prospect of a future he's jumping into without having planned it. He refuses to let that fear stop him, however. He cannot imagine a universe in which he does not come back for Juno Steel.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: for about 10 seconds, I was thinking of calling this "a universe without you," before I realized that was dangerously close to a pun, which I am not above, but it was so tonally inappropriate that I immediately became furious with myself and had to stop thinking about it.
> 
> Whew. Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment and/or kudos, if you feel so inclined. I hope you have a nice day and see a good dog.


End file.
